Thursday, March 8, 2007

World Book Day 2007

Thanks to a post over at ipanema's blog I discovered that last Thursday was the tenth anniversary of World Book Day in the UK. Her post was excellent and you should pop over to read the details.

What I want to talk about here, briefly, is the survey to mark the tenth anniversary in which 2044 people filled out the online survey, naming the ten books that they could not live without. Now according to my calculations that could be a list of 20,440 possible books to be ranked. Obviously not 20,440, since many people would have the same books in their lists and it turns out that the number of books chosen was 10,000.

Now we are talking books you can't live without. Books you would save if your house was on fire, books you might take with you to a desert island. Books you treasure, books that you would want to read again and again. In addition, we're not talking about a telephone survey where you might be caught on the spot. No, you had time to think about it and sit down and enter your 10 all time favourite "can't live without" books.

The top ten list shown below and taken, with thanks, from ipanema's site, is not too unexpected, except for one glaring exception. Well, to my mind, it's glaring. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, of which I've never heard. Researching it, I found it to be a fantasy trilogy. Well maybe they are books you can read over and over. I wonder and here it is in the top ten of 10,000 possible books and featuring in the top ten list for both women and men.

The survey also lists the top 100 books which I won't reproduce here but to make the top 100 is no mean achievement and obviously multiple people chose these books in their top 10.

So a large number of people were unable to live without, in the 42nd spot, The Da Vinci Code which everyone in the whole world must have bought by now. Certainly I enjoyed this well enough, but once was enough. I think I even gave the book away, which normally I never do . In fact it would not even make my top 100, let alone 10. At spot number 63 is The Secret History by Donna Tartt, a perfectly dreadful murder mystery. No, not on my top 10 or 100 or 1000. Well you get my drift.

I could go on but why don't you go on over there yourself and look at the results of the survey.

Now what I would pick for my top ten?Number 1: Niccolo Rising, by Dorothy DunnettNumber 2: ...................

WEll I am obviously not an avid reader...I enjoy reading but I didnt start to take it up until I was in my early thirties...my sister introduced me to some wonderful books...like the Poision Wood Bible, Hanna's Daughters, Bean Tree. Then there are all the wonderful mystery books I like...Cromwell, Riche, Rankin,Kellerman,so many....classics PD James...but could I live without them...yup...I think the book that would be most important to me would be a family book...outlining family history..or my bird books...

Hi Ellee,Welcome to my blog. No I don't think blogs will ever take over from books. But maybe some people are reading blogs who normally wouldn't read so that's a good thing, to my mind.So far though, this blogging thing is eating into my reading time but I'm hoping that I will become more efficient at it. Heaven's I'm retired for goodness sake!Regardsjmb

Hi ipanema,I first came to your site since I saw , via mybloglog, you were often on the same sites that I frequented. I'm a medblog reader on the whole.I like you site and I especially liked your World Book Day post.Regardsjmb

Hi smalltown rn,You certainly started with some good books. Barbara Kingsolver and who wrote Hanna's daughters, I think it was someone called Fredriksen or similar. We read that one for my bookclub.I also love mysteries, read a lot of them, plus I like legal thrillers too. Anyway you're still working and have less time than I.By the way, you have some great photos on your site.Regardsjmb

Hi Cathy,I don't know The Hiding Place. I'll check it out.Charlotte's Web is having a resurgence with the new movie, but I remember taking my two plus two neighbour kids to see it. When the pig was crying because Charlotte was dying everyone was laughing at the pig crying, except for us. We had tears pouring down our cheeks.When I heard there was a new movie version I thought about that.Regardsjmb